Susan Granger’s review of “Blood Diamond” (Warner Bros.)
The powerful diamond merchant De Beers is concerned about the underlying message of this thriller – for good reason. ‘Blood’ or ‘conflict’ diamonds are mined in war zones and sold, clandestinely, to diamond cartels. Basically, ‘bling-bling’ here is ‘bang-bang’ there, contributing to the mutilation and slaughter of thousands of innocents.
In Sierra Leone during the 1990s, rebels for the Revolutionary United Front were terrorizing villagers. Fisherman Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) was taken hostage and forced to work in the diamond fields. One day, he finds a huge pink diamond – and quickly buries it. This rare, valuable gemstone is a ticket out of Africa for his wife and daughters in a refugee camp and his son, who has been forcibly recruited as a ‘child-soldier.’ But Solomon needs help to retrieve it, so he agrees to join forces with Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), a wily diamond smuggler from Zimbabwe, and Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), an American journalist writing an expose: “Trail of Terror from Jungles to Jewelers.”
Writers Charles Leavitt and Marshall Herskovitz, writer/director Edward Zwick and cinematographer Eduardo Serra capture the complex human drama with its socio-political intrigue, although the dialogue often sounds like a history lecture. Djimon Hounsou delivers a fierce, compelling performance, Leonardo DiCaprio’s forceful maturity is a revelation, and Jennifer Connelly is earthy and shrewd.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Blood Diamond” is an exciting, adventurous 8. While the diamond industry website (diamondfacts.org) claims that 99% of diamonds are not ‘conflict’ by U.N. definition, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in September, 2006, that conflict diamonds still enter the United States. So if you’re buying diamonds this holiday season, ask for a Kimberley Process Certificate; it assures consumers that their purchase does not finance war and human rights abuses.
